Motown Celebrates All That Jazz

The Scene: The launching of Motown’s new jazz label, MoJazz, at a colossal party Thursday night at the Santa Monica Airport Museum of Flying. The party also commemorated the 75th anniversary of the first jazz recording.

The Buzz: Thursday night was every party planner’s nightmare: fierce competition. While the MoJazz crowd got down in Santa Monica, another group of glitterati was packing the Shrine Auditorium for Jean Paul Gaultier’s mammoth fashion show for the American Foundation for AIDS Research. On the premiere front, “The Last of the Mohicans” made its debut, and at the Sports Arena, Bruce Springsteen was opening the first of his three sold-out L.A. concerts.

Who Was There: MoJazz president Jheryl Busby; MoJazz performers Foley, Norman Brown, Terra Sul and Eric Reed; Gary Coleman; Freda Payne; and the eternally suave Billy Dee Williams.

Fashion Statement: Freda Payne’s elegantly outrageous, outrageously elegant outfit, which sinuously climbed her body and ended in a dramatic hood. From the back, you would have sworn she was Grace Jones.

Cultural-Elite Watch: According to press materials, the MoJazz “positioning statement” (not slogan, thank you very much) is “slightly to the left.”

Chow: Orleans catered a Cajun-Creole buffet that included prime rib, popcorn shrimp, calamari, sausage and new potatoes stuffed with jambalaya.

Kodak Moment: A helicopter containing VIPs landed outside the museum about 8:45. Guests walked out to watch, and the photographers (whose biggest haul so far had been shots of an arriving Gary Coleman) ran out to get the shot. The chopper door opened, disgorging a gorgeous model-type and a man in an oversized, crushed green velvet suit. Flashbulbs went off, the pair went into the party . . . and then everyone on the Tarmac wandered around asking each other, “Who was that?”

Pastimes: Combing the building looking for stars. Searching for a parking space. Watching tow trucks drive away with gold Mercedeses and the like.